128 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



The Determination of some Physical and Chemical 



Characters of some Samples of Water from the 



Irish Sea. 



By Alfred Holt, Jun., B.A. (Cantab.) 



Having been requested by Prof. Herdman to examine for 

 him some of the physical and chemical characters of the 

 water of the Irish Sea, with a view to selecting the most 

 practical and effective methods for their rapid determina- 

 tion, I obtained a number of samples from different places, 

 and estimated, as far as time allowed, the specific 

 gravity, colour, chlorine, total salinity, alkalinity, carbonic 

 acid gas in solution, and the lime. 



The ratios between these were then determined, in order 

 to see if they were sufficiently constant to enable one to 

 calculate from an accurate determination of one character 

 the values of the others. 



At the same time it was hoped that some knowledge of 

 the movements of the water of the Irish Sea area might be 

 obtained from examination of the values obtained. This 

 will be discussed at the end of this paper. Though every 

 care has been taken to obtain accuracy, the fact that I had 

 not always at my disposal a sufficiently accurate balance 

 forced me to use in the titrations known volumes of solu- 

 tions instead of known weights of them, which undoubtedly 

 may cause error. Further, for the same reason, some pro- 

 cesses had to be done volumetrically instead of gravimetric- 

 ally, which though easier to perform do not produce quite 

 such good results. 



